Weinberger said ‘Shawn Rays symmetry off - long body with short legs’

[lifepulse]

I appreciate all the eras of bodybuilding but for me, the 90s was the peak. Just fantastic. Think about the fact that the decade had 3 of the best Mr Olympias in Haney, Yates, Coleman and the top 5 guys in any of those years are easily BB Hall of Famers

I say this somewhat jokingly, somewhat seriously:

The 90s were the peak of human civilization in so many ways, BBing being one of them.

We had most of the tech and science that we have now -- but we hadn't yet tech and automatization completely overtake "effort". We still recognized effort as a good thing, and prized it -- sweating, getting your hands dirty, "being a real man" -- that mindset hadn't yet been "banned" or woked-away.

Then, political correctness -- and prizing "feelings" over "facts" -- became the order of the day.

The 90s guys were riding the wave of the effort-approach built during Arnold's day -- but had better drugs, better equipment, better know-how. It hadn't yet devolved into a drugs-ONLY game, into a "leaving a rep in the tank" game -- BBing was still mostly fire and brimstone, with a little bit of science thrown in for good measure -- but hadn't yet science-d away effort.

[harmankardon]

I say this somewhat jokingly, somewhat seriously:

The 90s were the peak of human civilization in so many ways, BBing being one of them.

We had most of the tech and science that we have now -- but we hadn't yet tech and automatization completely overtake "effort". We still recognized effort as a good thing, and prized it -- sweating, getting your hands dirty, "being a real man" -- that mindset hadn't yet been "banned" or woked-away.

Then, political correctness -- and prizing "feelings" over "facts" -- became the order of the day.

The 90s guys were riding the wave of the effort-approach built during Arnold's day -- but had better drugs, better equipment, better know-how. It hadn't yet devolved into a drugs-ONLY game, into a "leaving a rep in the tank" game -- BBing was still mostly fire and brimstone, with a little bit of science thrown in for good measure -- but hadn't yet science-d away effort.

Not of human civilization, western civilization. and its true late 90's was the peak,

I always think of the matrix and the comment that 99 was the peak and it was true haha.....

when the dot com bubble came and then 911. Things were set in action that signaled the beginning of the decline of the west. the dotcom bubble started the era of lower and lower interest rates which caused the 08 financial crisis and then the stimulus that followed worsened the situation long term outlook even more, eventually this will lead to the loss of the USD as world reserve currency which will signal the end of the western dominance. i think this will signal the next world war as i am skeptical that the USA with it military power will go quietly and once the usd is lost the USA will financially decline substantially.

[Big Beat]

Also the price of a house in the 1990's was reasonable.

I don't know about the US but there is a now serious problem in Europe with people in their 30's and 40's not owning their own homes due to how expensive houses have become. People in their 30's still living with their parents because they cannot afford rent. The housing market is way over priced and you would think at some point it will crash hard.

Anybody who bought a house in the late 80's or early 90's is sitting pretty now. They got in well before the hyper inflation of the 2000's.

Music in the 90's was also a hell of a lot better than today. The 1980's I thought was generally not good for music. The late 1960's still the best, a lot of the 1990's stuff was regurgated 1960's music. Still it was based on good stuff

Mainstream music today is the most shit it has ever been. That computerised auto tuned voice is in every song and it is atrocious. Music is being homogenized to the point of extinction, they found some sounds that people like and put it into a computer and we get the crapola pouring out.

[Bestia]

High marks for the use of "crapola". You don't get that a lot these days and I always liked the term

[Beti ona]

I'm not saying you're wrong, but I am curious to hear your reasons for this. I have never really heard any "conspiracy theories" about Dorian being "favored" per se, and given his overall demeanor, location, all of it, I don't see why they would have favored him (over, say, a Flex Wheeler). Do you think it was a race thing? Are there stories that I have missed out on?

The only thing that occurs to me is that they wanted to have a champion in Europe for market reasons.

In the same way that now they have 3 years in a row with an Arab champion

[Big Beat]

Joe liked big white Europeans.

He was always looking for another Arnold. He saw this as his best way to make money.

[GeorgeUK]

Dorian was just the best in the world.

[Bestia]

Dorian was just the best in the world.

He will forever represent what I believe to be the ideal approach to bodybuilding. Mouth shut, solid plan. Daily grind with no fanfare, show up to blow them up, then back in the cellar to improve.

His arrival was a seismic shift not just for physique but for mindset and discipline/dedication.

[Beti ona]

Not of human civilization, western civilization. and its true late 90's was the peak.

This is a good distinction, but now the world is globalized, everything that the West has done is not going to be done by other civilizations because there is simply no such possibility. It's like coming to bodybuilding in the current era or the 70s.

Nietzsche was right when he said that all those who came after hated and envied the Greeks. The Greeks were lucky, that happen only once in the history of the cosmos, they got there first and laid the foundations of civilization.

Now, why Greece? They invented theater, tragedy, mathematics, science, philosophy, etc... and in a sense, the cult of the body and the concepts of beauty. I think they used math or certain parameters of geometry to determine aesthetics. The Pantheon, for example, is a masterpiece that our best arquitecs or engineers would not be able to create.

We have no evidence of another type of culture that has had such a vast and rich period of creativity and vitalism. It was legal for all kinds of schools of thought to coexist, including some radical trolls as Diogenes, or Hegesias, who recommended suicide to his students. Today's world is absolute shit where there is no such degree of freedom. If a thinker talked about that kind of thing, he would be locked up in the psychiatric hospital.

Of course, aesthetics are not always related to functionality or usefulness, but the Greeks were not only concerned with external beauty, they practiced the development of moral virtues.

That's why Christianity invented a slave morality to make the Greeks look bad, they wanted to discredit them in the only way they could.

"Other peoples have saints: the Greeks have wise men."

Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy

[Beti ona]

Dorian was just the best in the world.

It's hard to argue against this, let's just say he had a couple of dubious wins, but who hasn't out of all the champions? And in those cases, politics plays the determining role.

[Beti ona]

eventually this will lead to the loss of the USD as world reserve currency which will signal the end of the western dominance. i think this will signal the next world war as i am skeptical that the USA with it military power will go quietly and once the usd is lost the USA will financially decline substantially.

Empires have been going up and down for 10,000 years. Many people who hate the US and the West, rightly, are happy to see them fall, but hope (without reason) that the world will be better with another country / es exercising leadership. I think that at first the new leadership will be favorable because they have to offer a friendly face and a good treatment to win sympathy, but in the long term they will become the same as we have seen before.

The problem with the fall of the West is that the alternatives that are going to emerge are all nationalist/totalitarian systems where freedom and individualism have no place. Of course, the West itself has long since turned to fascism.

The outlook for thinking people who want to see a better world is disastrous.

[GeorgeUK]

It's hard to argue against this, let's just say he had a couple of dubious wins, but who hasn't out of all the champions? And in those cases, politics plays the determining role.

At the time, nobody was up in arms about Dorian winning shows. Decades later people have turned it into a talking point.